


The Sun Rose Clear

by onArete



Series: Competent Women [2]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: I love this child ok, June backstory, Watch out for that, she's possessed by the chalice for a bit there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-22 21:08:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17067149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onArete/pseuds/onArete
Summary: Refuge isn’t just a city. It’s a home.  And, for the most part, it’s a family. They stay inside the city limits and work on their farms and do all the typical things that people in small towns and villages do.See, the outside world is dangerous.  June hears about it daily - from the miners to the farm hands to the shopkeep to her daddy.  There’s rumors of towns turning into black glass. Of armies being sucked into black holes and spit into space.  Of shimmering bubbles trapping people inside until they choke to death.It’s much safer in Refuge.





	The Sun Rose Clear

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that June is possessed by the Temporal Chalice, both in canon and in this fic.

Nobody knows where or when June was born.  She herself knows this because her daddy told her so, and he never lies.

In fact, there’s a lot of things he never does.

For one thing, her dad never goes far from Refuge.  He’s the Elder, and he’s kinda in charge - nobody wants to mess with Sheriff Jack, after all.  So no matter where June was born, she lives in Refuge now, and nobody really leaves there.

Refuge isn’t just a city. It’s a home.  And, for the most part, it’s a family. They stay inside the city limits and work on their farms and do all the typical things that people in small towns and villages do.

See, the outside world is  _ dangerous _ .  June hears about it daily - from the miners to the farm hands to the shopkeep to her daddy.  There’s rumors of towns turning into black glass. Of armies being sucked into black holes and spit into space.  Of shimmering bubbles trapping people inside until they choke to death.

It’s much safer in Refuge.

And people go there for safety.

A drow girl, only a decade or two older than June, stumbles out of a cave system and hikes her way through the blinding desert sun, burning and blinded, until she practically falls into the town.  They take her in. They hide her from her pursuers. Her name is Ren.

A human man, with a big muscles and a soft smile, is found in the desert without water or help.  Jack and June put him up in their house - more of a cabin, really - until he can sit up and talk and eat food without choking on it.  They ask him for his name, and he’s evasive about it.

“C’mon, sir,” Jack says from where he sits whittling with the man.  “If you give us a name, we can help you get back to your family or home.”

The burly man shakes his head, carefully moving the tiny knife - it seems comically small in his huge hands - over his block of wood.  Is it a  _ duck _ ?

June’s supposed to be in bed, but why would he be carving a  _ duck _ ?

“I can get home alright, I think,” the man replies.  “You’re good people, though.”

“We can’t keep calling you the man,” says Jack, but he’s smiling a little as he lights his pipe.  “Got a nickname?”

“Um...” the person hesitates, as though thinking hard.  “Bear?”

“Bear,” says June’s daddy, rolling the word over in his mouth.  “Hm. That’ll do as well as any name, I suppose.”

Bear smiles a little.  It’s a soft, quiet thing that June immediately likes.

“So what brings you out to Woven Gulch?”

“I... I just got lost,” Bear says, stumbling a little over his words.

Jack shrugs.  “Running from some disaster?  That’s usually how people end up here.”

He nods.  “Something like that, yeah.”

Her daddy’s dark face softens.  “Well, Bear, we’re glad to have you.  We’ve got an extra room that you’re welcome to.”

“We?”

“Me ‘n my daughter, June.”

Bear waves a little at June, and she starts.  Her hiding place behind the rocking chair was supposed to be foolproof!

Jack turns towards her, following Bear’s gaze.   He smiles a little. “C’mon out then, Junebug. Might as well, if you’re up so late.”

“Sorry, Daddy,” she says as she joins him and Bear in front of the fire.

“Curious as ever,” he replies with a smile.  “It’s not a bad thing, Junebug, just you’ll be tired tomorrow.”

She sticks out her tongue.  “I’m never tired!”

It makes Bear laugh.  He’s wearing a red robe with a fancy patch on it, and his dark skin shines in the firelight.  It kind of matches June’s.

\---

“I can’t impose on... on you any more,” says Bear the next morning as Jack makes pancakes and June sets the table, going up on her tiptoes to slide the wooden plates into their places.  “I’d, um, I’d like to leave something with you as a sort of thank you.”

“There’s no need for that,” Jack protests, but he doesn’t listen.

From his satchel, Bear pulls a goblet, golden and glistening with jewels.  June stares at it - she’s never seen anything so fancy in her entire life.

“No,” Jack says again.  “Really, we can’t accept this - anybody would’ve done the same as we did -”

“Please?” says Bear, and he’s doing puppy dog eyes that even June, in her five-year-old cuteness, can’t manage.

Her daddy sighs, and dithers, but accepts the goblet.

“It got a name?” he asks, turning it over in his hands.

“Uh, yes!” Bear replies.  “It’s the Mag- wait-” he raises his hand to his eyes, squints at a line of smeared ink.  “It’s the, um... Temporal Shalice. Wait, no. Chalice. Temporal Chalice.”

Her daddy raises an eyebrow.  “Catchy name.”

Bear shrugs in reply, and looks anywhere but the chalice.  “Hah, yeah, I didn’t name it.”

“Are you gonna stay here for a while?” asks June.

Bear looks down at her.  “Probably not, Junie. I gotta get back to my family.”

She sticks out her bottom lip in a pout.  “But...”

Bear actually looks torn about it, and June mentally counts that as a success.  Her pouting doesn’t go anywhere with her daddy.

“We can help with whatever you need,” Jack says, spearing another bite of pancake with his fork.  “Water, money. Directions.”

“Water’d be... that’d be good,” he replies, and he looks kind of sheepish.  Which is funny, June thinks, for a man named Bear. “And directions.”

“Sure thing.  Where’re you headed?”

“Uh...” 

Jack glances over at his daughter, who smiles back up at him.  Bear doesn’t have a lot of answers, but June likes him.

\---

In the end, her daddy directs him to Neverwinter.  Bear leaves with little ado, a wave to June and pulling his red robe over his head to protect from the sandstorms outside of the Woven Gulch.

\---

So now June and her daddy have a real fancy cup.  The Temporal Chalice. The name feels funny in June’s mind, like something that looks sweet but’s really all rotten on the inside.  Mostly, it sits on their mantel and shines more than the rest of their little home.

“It makes me want to look at it,” June notes one evening as they sit at dinner.  “Can we cover it up?”

“Sure thing, Junebug,” her daddy replies, dropping an extra flannel shirt of his over the chalice.  He doesn’t admit it, but he’s been looking at it, too.

They both breathe a little easier, with the chalice out of sight.  But still, June knows it’s there, just across the room. Like an itch she can’t quite scratch.

She’s glad when dinner and dishes are over and she can run out back to the mines, to say hi to the late shift of miners on their way down.  Sometimes they let her come ride in the minecart with them, too-big hardhat carefully secured onto her head. She knows the caves like the back of her hand, like something deep inside her heart.

\---

June turns six, and goes to school.  It’s, well... it’s school. Classes are fine and all, and the math makes more sense than she’d like to admit, but really she spends a lot of her time staring out the window.  Some bright soul put the windows facing away from town, so the kids don’t get distracted by the passersby - but the world outside is plenty enough to fascinate June.

The clouds are always rolling across the sky.  Sometimes, they look like worms or ravens or bears.  Beneath them sprawls the pine trees, green and stretching up to the hot hot sun.  But below ground... below is what June  _ really  _ cares about.

It’s so hot in Refuge, is all.  She doesn’t really like that, per se, and going underground into the mines feels like a breath of air.

The stone is cool and slick.  The torchlights glisten. She watches goosebumps rise on her dark arms.  Even though she doesn’t have darkvision, going into the darkness feels comforting.

So June goes to school and goes to the mines after, playing in the entryway or in the quarry.  She never goes over to a friend’s house, because there’s hardly any kids in Refuge, and none of them really like her anyway.

They think she’s weird; always talking about the mines, always understanding what they’re taught quickly, too quickly to be normal.  Sometimes, they whisper things about her.

“I heard she’s a dragon,” one girl mutters to another.  “That she’s hiding to make the rest of us look bad.”

“Well,  _ I  _ heard she’s a drow,” another gossips.  “And she  _ cut off her ears  _ when she escaped!  And that’s why she likes underground.”

June just hunches further down at her desk, and touches her ears softly.  They’re round and small. Human ears, she tells herself. She’s just as human as anybody else.

But still they whisper, and still she flees to the mines.

But when the clock tower strikes six, June listens through the well, and heads for home.  Because six means that Jack is off of work, and that means dinnertime.

\---

“So what did you learn today, Junebug?” her dad asks one night, just like he does every night.

June rolls her eyes.  She’s just turned seven, and although she’s scary smart for her years, she’s fallen into a sarcastic phase.  “Nothing,” she says.

Jack just smiles, raises an eyebrow.  “Nothing at all?”

“Nope.  Just a buncha math I already know.”

“What math?   _ I  _ don’t know it.”

She sticks her tongue out at him.  “You’re the Elder, you gotta know it.”

“But what if I don’t?”

It’s a lot of eye rolling and prodding, but eventually June tumbles into a frantic explanation of fractions and decimals and all sorts of things that she stole an upper-year textbook to read.  Jack smiles and clears the table, and hands June a notebook when she starts working through a problem on her napkin with water.

They ignore the pull of the chalice.

They focus on the  _ here  _ and the  _ now _ .

She’s only seven, but June knows that that’s what really matters.

\---

“I got a new deputy today,” her daddy says a few weeks later as he makes dinner.  “Deputy Isaak. Used to be a miner, you might know him?”

June nods.  “Uh-huh! He’s my friend!”

Jack smiles.  “That’s good, Junebug.  I asked him over for dinner.”

“Great!” She says, hopping up from the stool where she’d been somewhat clumsily cutting up a stonefruit.  “I can show ‘im my maths books and the chalice and the duck from- from the Visitor and -”

He lets her trail off, and keeps stirring the pot of soup.

Undaunted, June darts through their cabin towards the two windows at the front.  She pushes aside the checkered curtains, squints through them at the street in front of them.

“I don’t see ‘im,” she pouts.

“I’m sure he’s on his way.  You wanna set the table, Junebug?”

She doesn’t, really, but she does anyway, and as she sets down the last fork there’s a knock on the door.

June races for the door, pops it open with her daddy standing behind her.  “Isaak!” she cheers.

“Hey there, June,” he says.  “Sheriff Jack.”

“Just Jack, please,” her daddy replies, clapping Isaak on the shoulder, and escorting him into their little house.

He and Jack talk about politics, and the Dangerous Outside World for a while, but Isaak listens to June, which she appreciates.  Not a lot of people do. He lets her go on and on about maths and the caves and - and the chalice.

When Isaak glances over at the cloth-covered item, he’s got a strange look in his eyes that June’s not sure she likes so much.

\---

She turns eight with a quiet celebration.  Her daddy offered to have a birthday party for her, but June doesn’t want to tell him that she’s got nobody her age to invite, so she brushes it off, and asks if they can go to the Davy Lamp for dinner instead.

Miss Ren welcomes them in.  She’s nice, and June really likes her.

She and her daddy are seated at a booth near the back, with dinners placed in front of both of them.  He even lets her have a glass of cider!

They’re finishing their meals and laughing about some anecdote from his work when Ren comes over, holding a covered tray and leading a group of other bar patrons.  She sets it down in front of June with a flourish, pulling off the cover to reveal a small cake, frosted with yellow.

She’s grinning so big her face hurts, and behind Ren the other people start singing happy birthday to her.  They mangle the words and the tune and June beams the whole time.

\---

After school the next day, June hurries to the mines.  She drops her book bag by the lockers, and grabs a piece of meat from the icebox for the bugs.  There’s a few miners having a meeting around the table-- Isaak, Susanna, Cassidy. Susanna’s shouting something about employee safety.  Cassidy’s yelling about the mine run dry. Isaak himself is sitting back to listen, and he waves a little to June as she comes in.

She waves back, and tugs open the doors, and walks right in.

As the heavy metal doors close behind her, their arguing voices grow softer and softer until all June can hear is the faint chirping of the bugs and the soft crackle of the torches on the walls.  She’s wearing her favorite yellow dress, and her arms are cold, but it feels wonderful.

She laughs as she darts off of the main corridor.  The day is young, and there’s an entire cave system to explore.  June is eight and innocent and has no idea what’s coming.

\---

June listens for the clock tower to chime six.  Really, she does-- she listens hard, but the familiar chiming never comes.  So she shrugs, and keeps on going.

June clambers up fallen rocks and hops over gaps in the floor and squints into the darkness until her eyes adjust.  She follows a windy little tunnel around and away, before it opens up into a big room that she recognizes. Sure, she’s maybe a few feet in the air - but she knows that she’s right next to Shaft B.

Great!

She turns and scrambles backwards down the wall the way her daddy taught her.  Three points of contact, center of gravity towards the rock. If you do fall, don’t put your hands back or you’ll break your arms.

June doesn’t fall.

She makes it just fine onto the ground, but she knows that she needs to be careful.  The big open area where the shafts intersect is made bigger and more open by the huge hole - the one that she is Never to Go Near - in the middle of it that marks the further descent of the shafts, continually deepened by Cassidy and her crew.

There’s no noise except for the quiet chirping of the bugs.  She doesn’t hear the clock tower chime for dinner, and so June has no reason to leave.  She settles down with her slab of meat, and tears it up into tiny pieces, amusing herself by trying to get the bugs to do tricks.

They mostly want to eat the meat.  She lets them, and settles for the fact that they’ll probably never do a somersault for her.

\---

Eventually, she gets bored and clambers back up the wall and into the little crevice and away from the shafts.

“June!” shouts a voice from far away.  “June, where are you?!”

“Junebug!”

June herself does not respond to either voice, because she’s not sure if they’re just echoes along the cave walls.  The mines do that, sometimes, and she just has to learn to live with it. Just in case, though, she starts making her way through the crevice.  Back over the fallen boulders, jumping back across the gaps in the ground, yellow dress the only bright thing in the cave.

She stumbles to the edge just in time to have a front row view of the shafts.  Across the room, across the deep deep hole that she is Never to Go Near because she could fall in, she sees two people.

One of them is tall and dark-skinned, with a bright sheriff’s badge pinned to his chest.  Her daddy. The other is light-skinned and sweating even in the cold of the mines. He’s shouting - Isaak.

June doesn’t like it when adults argue.  She turns around and slowly, carefully, descends from the crevice until she’s standing across the hole from them.

She turns around.  At her feet, something catches the light of the flickering torches - a cup.  A cup that June recognizes perfectly well, even though she hasn’t seen it since the Visitor - what was his name? what did he look like - brought it to her and her daddy years ago.  

June bends down, and picks up the chalice.

June stands up, and watches as Isaak shoves her daddy hard, and they’re too close to the pit that she is Never to Go Near, and he - and Jack - and her  _ daddy _ -

His arms pinwheel, and his hat falls first, and his badge is shining under the light and he looks up and sees her and then he’s holding a wand, casting a spell -

June screams -

Isaak looks up, fear in his eyes - Isaak, who pushed her daddy -

Her daddy, falling into the pit she is Never to Go Near, he daddy who is - who is -

June’s fingers tighten around the golden cup and she screams as the world goes white.

\---

Her hands are not her own.  She is holding the chalice - someone else is holding the chalice - something else has her hands and they are holding the chalice together.

The Something Else seems to feel her in there, trying to move, and shoves June back back back to the darkest corners of the mind - of her own mind - of  _ their  _ mind.

She can’t move.  Instead, June fights to keep herself alive at all.

She is  _ June _ .  Her daddy is Jack.  She lives in Refuge.  She likes maths and caves and rocks that are cold with dew when she touches them.  Her daddy calls her Junebug. She is eight years old. She has a wooden duck from the Visitor.  Ren made her a birthday cake. Isaak is the deputy sheriff. He killed her daddy. She is holding a cup.

‘No,’ June thinks.

She is holding the  _ Temporal Chalice _ .

‘Yes, thinks the rest of her’ - the rest of her that  _ is the cup _ .  ‘Yes, that’s me.  And you’re going to stay back there, and out of my way.’

June fights the cup as best she can.  She struggles to take back her hands, her fingers - her mind.  But it’s holding her there like she’s buried in stone and she’s struggling to breathe.

Fighting hurts, though, and June is only eight years old.  She is watching through the cup’s eyes that used to be her own as she grows older, as the milky white space all around her shows the town.

Over and over June watches the bubble rise, the sign be carved at it’s entrance.

_ By their sacrifice, our home is made safe _ .

She thinks about sacrifice, sometimes, when June feels more alive and more Herself.  She thinks about how Isaak killed her daddy and maybe killed her - is she dead? She doesn’t know.  June thinks about Is This Worth It, and Is It Good that the chalice has her body.

She’s keeping them safe, after all.

When June is nine, she watches a purple worm rise to destroy the town that she loves.  

‘I can stop Refuge from being destroyed,’ the cup that is also June whispers to her.  ‘Just give me full control. Let me take over. Use me, Junebug, and you will save your town.  Use me, June, and you will save your town  _ again _ .’

It’s a moment of clarity, where June is not the cup and the cup is not June.  And she thinks about it, she really does. June thinks about Ren and Luca and Redmond, about Cassidy and Susanna and Paloma.  June thinks about how she watched the town put up a sign and build a statue for her, and how it all went up in flames.

“Alright,” she says shakily, and her fingers tighten around the handles of the Temporal Chalice.  “Alright.”

\---

The purple worm does not destroy the town, except it does.  June watches as Refuge goes up in flames, burnt up from the inside out -

But then, it’s not.

Then, Refuge is whole again, and she breathes a little sigh of relief, hands shaking on the cup.  She’s tired, she realizes. 

‘That’s because you’re trying to use me all on your own,’ whispers the Chalice from her trembling grip. ‘If you let me help, we can save Refuge again.’

June shakes her head no.  And for a long long while, she wields the Chalice alone.  Every hour, she chooses to save the town. Every hour, the bubble she holds over the purple worm is destroyed before she can finish saving the town.

And so, hour after hour, June keeps going back.  She uses the Chalice until she falls to her knees shaking, sweaty.  Her grip never loosens.

‘I’ll still save Refuge, June,’ it whispers to her again.  ‘I’ll do what you’ve been doing. I’ll save your town. I’ll save Ren and Cassidy and Luca and everyone, Junebug.  If you let me help you, we can save Refuge  _ together _ .’

June struggles on through forty-one more hours, forty-one more almost-destructions, before she lets the chalice help her.

“I’m just letting you help until something changes,” she tells it sternly, lifting it with quaking arms to eye level.  “As soon as someone comes to fix Refuge for good, you wake me up, alright?”

‘Of course, Junebug,’ promises the Temporal Chalice.  ‘But how do you know that you will want to be awake?’

And then June is gone.

\---

She’s in a small white space all alone for a split second before June is back in herself, in her body - but once again, she has no control.

‘It’s alright,’ promises the Chalice.  ‘I’m just doing what you did. I’m saving Refuge.  It’s alright, Junebug. You’ve saved it for so long.  You can rest. You can sleep.’

June does not sleep.  Even the best sheriff has a deputy, she knows - someone to watch their back, just in case they can’t save the town all by themself.  

(She hates that Isaak was her daddy’s deputy, hates that he  _ killed  _ him - )

June rests but watches as the Temporal Chalice loops time around her.  Eighty-three hours. Two hundred and nine hours. Three hundred and twenty seven hours.

June is nine or ten years old, she thinks, but she can see her hands and they’re lined.  She can see her skin, and it’s sagging. June can see herself in a yellow sundress aging before her eyes.

“Give it back to me,” she tells the cup, voice rusty from disuse.  “It’s my turn to save the town again, Chalice. Give it back.”

‘Are you sure you want that, Junebug?’ asks the cup, sounding amused.  ‘Look who’s right outside our bubble.’

Their vision shifts, June and the cup’s together.  She’s only ever watched the surface of Refuge, before - seen Roswell and the bank robbers, Ren and the purple kerchiefed ruffians - but now June sees just outside of the milky white bubble that holds her and the Chalice together.  

_ Isaak _ .

Pounding on the bubble with a pickaxe.

Isaak, who killed her daddy, is coming to kill her, too.

‘He’ll kill you if I don’t help you, Junebug,’ whispers the Chalice.  ‘He’ll murder you like he murdered your daddy.’

June is ten-twenty-thirty and she is crying, but she lets control of time and her body rest in the intangible grip of the Temporal Chalice.  It’s keeping Refuge safe. It’s keeping her safe.

And maybe her job isn’t to be a hero this time, June thinks, quiet to herself.  Maybe her job is to hold still and let the town be saved.

\---

She has a lot of time to think as she watches nothing but Isaak change between hours.  By age, June is thirteen. By looks, she’s in her fifties. By anything else, June is a tiny burst of sentience in the back of the mind controlled by the Temporal Chalice.

She thinks a lot, though.  About why and how Isaak killed her daddy.  About how they were looking for her in the mines before it happened.  

She spends forty-three cycles consumed with guilt and hatred, and in those hours June seems small and the Chalice seems bigger than ever.  She hates that she’s the reason her dad died, she hates that she almost  _ wants  _ the cup to finish taking over her mind so she doesn’t have to think about it any more.

Seventy-six cycles later, hours full of June feeling small and wanting the cup to take over, she realizes something, something very important indeed.

The Temporal Chalice wants to be wanted.

‘I do,’ it agrees, speaking again to her for the first time in a very long time.  ‘I’m so very glad you want me this much, Junebug. Oh, dead - there goes the bank again.’

June screams from her place in the back of her own mind for the next fourteen cycles.

\---

Isaak wouldn’t just have killed her daddy, June figures as she watches Ren kick out the ruffians with her jerk remover spell that she’s so proud of.  (She’s seen this moment five hundred and ninety six times, and it still never gets old.)

Isaak wouldn’t have just done it out of meanness or spite.  No, he must’ve felt the Chalice, too - he must’ve wanted it badly, so badly.

June hates him a little for that - but who is she to judge?  She’s been holding it for the past hundreds of hours. She’ll keep holding onto it until she dies if that’s what it takes to save Refuge.

\---

She clutches tight to the chalice and lets it keep control.  June watches, detached, for the next hundred hours - and then the next hundred - and the next.  She’s an observer, nothing more, as her body withers before her eyes. She stares at her yellow sundress that looks so comical on a woman of seventy-something.  June watches it begin to dwarf her frame as her hair turns white and she hunches over and her eyes struggle to stay open.

Mostly, though, June avoids thinking about what is happening to her, and how she is dying, and how once she dies Refuge will as well.  Instead, she tries to focus on the little things.

She watches Ren organize the shelves behind the counter, the same way every hour.  She sees Roswell break their chair, every hour. Watches Luca as he reads his Caleb Cleveland novel for the entire hour.  (She’s kind of upset that he never makes it past chapter three, but June’s pretty sure that the museum director is the murderer.)

June watches Refuge die and resurrect, die and resurrect, ad infinitum.  She is a perfect observer of the exact same actions, the exact same ways. If she wanted to, she could conduct it like a song.

\---

June is probably fifteen, and looks a hundred and twenty, when something changes.

It is the first change in Refuge’s rhythm that she’s seen in the past seven years, and it sparks something within her.

She-and-the-Chalice control every bubble in and around Refuge.  When something pierces the biggest bubble, June knows - and it seems to pull her, to pull  _ June _ , to the forefront of her mind.

She looks up at three men.  A human, an elf, and a dwarf.  They’re carrying axes and umbrellas and books, but even so, to June it seems that they carry  _ hope. _

“Find me,” she croaks, before the Chalice forces it’s way back up to the middle of her mind and June is back on the sidelines, watching.

Always, always watching.

\---

Magnus.

Merle.

Taako.

She watches them again, and again, and again.  They’re coming to get the Chalice. They’re coming to save Refuge.  They’re coming to save  _ her _ .

She repeats their names like a mantra, like if she thinks them enough she’ll summon them and they’ll pop the bubble and steal the Chalice out of her mind and she can be June again.

Magnus.

Merle.

Taako.

She’s withering faster than ever, and it’s getting harder to breathe, and her vision is all fuzzy on the edges -

Magnus.

Merle.

Taako.

June-and-the-Chalice can barely stand upright, but they need to keep looping the hour - they both know this so well, they both  _ must _ continue the hour -

The loop must continue, the bubble must stay, the town must be saved until she dies -

Magnus.

Merle.

Taako.

As everything goes black and white fuzzy for June, she knows one thing deep in her soul.

This is the last hour.

\---

And then, June is in the Davy Lamp.  She’s not anywhere near in control, not anymore.  The Chalice is speaking in her voice and laughing with her laugh and moving her body and forcing Magnus and Merle and Taako to relive their worst memories.

An arm of pink tourmaline.

Arsenic in a bottle.

A wife, long-dead but never forgotten.

June sobs, and screams, and tries to tear her way past the Chalice and into the front of her mind -  _ she  _ wants to talk, goddamnit, this is the last hour and the Chalice is supposed to wake her up and -

They all choose no.

She’s so proud of them, as proud as she knows how to be.  They chose no when she chose yes, they’re going to save Refuge without the Chalice -

June is forced to watch as Phandalin burns.

‘Goodbye, Junebug,’ says the Chalice in her mind, sounding small.  ‘We did good, you and I.’

She barely keeps her footing as the cup is taken off of the table and June is June again.

She is nobody else.

\---

“You don’t understand,” says Isaak to Magnus and Merle and Taako.  “I killed her daddy.”

June looks eight years old but she has lived a thousand lifetimes.  June is small and sweet and so much older and wiser than she could ever look.

She is herself, she reminds herself.

(She hesitates, waiting for the- what was it called- the cup to control her, but no, she’s herself again -)

“C’mon, silly,” June says, and takes Isaak’s hand.  She’s long since forgiven him. “We gotta get out of here.”

He lets himself be led out of the mines.  June walks with him in silence all the way to the Davy Lamp.  They sit down at a booth, ignoring the shocked looks from the other patrons -

As far as they know, June has been missing for a year.

June has been missing for seven years.

She’s been missing for an entire lifetime.

\---

She’s halfway through her first meal in years - a good hearty plate of chicken, served by a very confused Ren - “I thought you’d died, Junebug!” - when it happens.  Magnus and Merle and Taako must’ve done it, because as June looks at the rest of the people in the room-

She can tell by their faces that the rest of the tavern is remembering.

Seven years of deaths.

Seven years of false life.

One hour, over and over and over, and the cup keeping June alive long enough to do so-

Ren sweeps her up into a hug.  “Guess the sign was more right than we’d thought,” she whispers.

\---

Life doesn’t go back to normal right away.  The bubble remains.

But things get better.

June’s cabin was cut off when the bubble arose, so she moves in above the Davy Lamp with Ren, who treats her like a little sister.  She tries to go back to school, but all the kids are more afraid of her than before, so she ends up being taught magic by Ren and gambling by Ash and maths by Brogdon.

It’s not perfect.

She often finds herself hesitating, waiting for the chalice to speak and move for her.  She misses her daddy with a physical pain. She longs to be nine years old, for real.

But like all shattered things, her edges slowly round and soften.  June wears yellow and mixes drinks and learns Ren’s patented Jerk Remover spell.  She grows older and kind and smart.

The kids are still afraid of her, a little, but they love her too.  She saved them all. They don't invite her to help mold the statue of Magnus and Merle and Taako, but that's okay. Every so often, she goes to the sign and waves at them outside the bubble. 

\---

“The bubble will fall soon,” says Paloma conversationally when June stops by her hut. She's just turned fifteen - actually, truly fifteen, even though she feels like she's been alive for centuries.

“Alright,” June replies, taking a scone. “That a prophecy?”

“No no,” Paloma says, shaking her head as she works to shape another crystal with her war hammer. “Just a feeling that things are getting better.”

“But how can you tell?” asks June who has lived seven years without it and still dreams of the cup’s voice in her head, the way it called to her, took over her voice and her limbs and -

“I see it in the sunrise,” Paloma tells her, snapping her out of it. “This morning, the sky was clear.”

June looks up and out the window. 

‘Let me in,’ whispers a memory of the chalice. ‘I could make things better, Junebug, you know I could-’

She shakes her head. Above them, through the bubble, the sky is blue and cloudless. 

\---

She helps Ren clean out the attic one day, and stumbles across a chest of blueprints. For the sheriff’s office. For the bank. For the Temple of Istus. 

And a small scroll in a tube - the design of a statue that was built after June got caught by the golden cup. Two designs for the one statue. 

June and Jack stand smiling in both. The one that stands proud in the town has a hooded figure: the Visitor, the one who carved her a duck. The one who gave them the cup - but she's got a funny feeling about them, like something long-forgotten and only half-remembered. 

The Visitor, with his smiling face in the other design, gave her and her daddy the chalice. She should think them to be a bad person. 

And yet June can't quite convince herself of that. 

In fact, she's got a nagging feeling that this scroll isn't hers to keep at all.

\---

June watches from the Davy Lamp as the bubble falls. She sees the rest of Refuge swarming their rescuers, but she's got no great urge to be part of the crowd. 

If June’s learned anything, it's that she is herself. She will never be defined by anything else. 

So she waits, listening to her own voice, obeying her own choices. June shoves the cup to the back of her mind, and thanks Magnus and Merle and Taako.

Just before they go, she gets that persistent nagging feeling again, and she hands Magnus the scroll. 

“The statue, huh?” Ren asks her once they're gone. 

June shrugs, wipes a cloth across the counter. “It just felt right.”

She hears the chink of glass behind her as the dark elf shelves bottles. “Then it's something worth doing, Junebug.”

\---

The world is falling down around her. June fires blindly every spell she knows - Thunderwave, Magic Missile, Firebolt. She can hear shouts of pain as she connects with invisible enemies. 

She'd been forced out of the Davy Lamp, her back pressed up against the statue of her and her daddy and the Visitor. 

June fights for her life with her spells and her fists. At her side she can't feel her daddy, carved in clay. Her younger self, smiling. The Visitor, who -

A whip she can't see catches June across the shoulder. She swears, screams, fires blindly at it. 

June is bloody and panting and desperate when a blue light flashes across the sky. She is pulled away, then - oh god, no, this is just like the chalice, like the  _ Temporal Chalice - _ into a story a hundred years in the making. 

Magnus. 

Merle. 

Taako. 

Four other birds on their silver ship. 

Falling into Faerun with the clear-rising sun. 

The  _ relics _ .

The  _ Temporal Chalice _ .

The  _ Hunger _ \- come for their world at last. In front of looms a million shades of black monsters, and in that moment, June is afraid. 

She is afraid that after everything, she will lose herself. 

She presses her back up against the statue of her and her daddy and the Visitor - Bear -  _ Magnus _ \- and screams. June will not die today. She will  _ not _ !

And then, as a battle wagon slide to a halt and Ren throws open the door to let June in, a green light flashes across the universes. 

And June - bloody and battered and unbroken - looks to the darkened sky as she hears a song. 

**Author's Note:**

> June? A competent woman? YES! I love her, and I had a blast (no pun intended) writing this. Hope you enjoyed! Love you guys!


End file.
